Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(70)
The skyline was alien: upturned ships and wind turbines, that massive ocean liner buried nose-first in shattered concrete. The skies were full of rotor drones and wheeling gulls, the hum of traffic and stink of methane. To the south, she could see a vast factoryfarm, tiny metal figures laboring among GMO crops. Automata, making food they’d never eat. Feeding people who never thanked them.
One day, those hands will close, Ana. And they will become fists.
Hope leaned against the railing, looking out over the crush of humanity below. A rusty wind whipped her long flame-red hair around her face. Ana was struck by how beautiful and sad she looked. Bee-stung lips and haunted eyes.
“What do you want to know?” the lifelike asked.
Ana swallowed hard, tried to beat her misgivings about Hope down into her boots.
“You remember Silas Carpenter?” she finally asked.
“One doesn’t forget the man who helped birth her.” Hope glanced at Ana, then back to the bizarre skyline. “Zeke told me what he did. Rewriting your past. Pretending to be your grandfather. I wonder how long he thought it could last?”
“Faith snatched him. Tried to grab me, too. Take me with her.”
“Back to Babel.” Hope nodded.
“But why?”
The lifelike steepled her fingers, pressed them to her lips. Ana was acutely aware of Ezekiel standing beside her. The warmth of him. The soft whine of the servos and pistons in his new arm. Hope looked to the northern horizon, toward the Glass. Toward Babel.
“Your father created us to love, Ana,” she said. “But we love almost too much. In the days we were first created, it was even worse. The world was so new to us. Every feeling was so loud. Every sensation so tangible.” She glanced at Ezekiel, smiled sadly. “No one can love like we do. And when two of us love each other …”
Ana knew what Hope meant. Ezekiel had spoken about how hard it was for lifelikes to process emotions without a lifetime’s experience. She still found it hard to imagine the intensity of it. The ferocity. She looked at Ezekiel, remembering how wonderful it had felt to fall back into his arms. But what must it have been like for him to catch her? And how must it have felt to love that desperately, only to have it torn away from you?
Hope shook her head and sighed.
“Gabriel adored Grace. Losing her in the shuttle explosion nearly destroyed him. Looking back now, I think perhaps it drove him mad. And all he’s done since the revolt has ultimately been about her. Your father gave us many gifts, Ana. But one gift, he always kept for himself.”
“And that was?” Ana asked.
“The gift of life, of course. It wouldn’t do for the Almighty to teach his children to create as he had. What use, then, for a God?”
“Lifelikes can’t make more lifelikes … ?”
“No. And that is all Gabe desires. To see his beloved Grace remade. Everything else is meaningless to him. It became a source of … friction between us.” Hope looked at Ezekiel. “Things were difficult after you left, brother. The family we once were disintegrated. Faith and Mercy stood with Gabriel. I couldn’t stomach what we’d done, left all of it behind. But Uriel and the others considered Gabe’s love for Grace a frailty. All too human. He and our remaining siblings have become … something worse than the rest of us put together.”
“So that’s why Faith snatched Silas?” Ana pressed. “To bring him back to Babel in the hope he’d teach them how to create more lifelikes?”
“Possibly,” Hope replied. “But Silas’s field of expertise was neuroscience. Alone, I sincerely doubt he has the knowledge to create another one of us. Your father was the true genius of Gnosis Laboratories, Ana. Ironically, in destroying him, Gabriel destroyed his best chance of seeing Grace reborn.”
“So why would Faith want me?”
“Nicholas Monrova is dead. But all his knowledge is locked inside the Myriad supercomputer. When your father suspected a conspiracy within the company, he reprogrammed Myriad to only take orders from himself or members of his family. And thus, a member of his family can unlock the AI. Command it to reveal the secrets of creating more lifelikes. If Gabriel truly wishes Grace reborn …”
“… He needs me,” Ana said.
“Yes. He needs you.”
Ana scoped the city of Armada. This scab of rust and ruin, humanity clinging to it by its fingertips. What would the world become if Gabriel learned how to create more lifelikes? What would a race of beings who believed themselves superior to humanity in every way do to humanity when they could build an army of themselves?
She looked south to the factoryfarm. Those tiny metal figures, slaving away.
And will we deserve it?
She’d be a fool to risk it. If the secret to unlocking Myriad was inside her head, marching back to Babel to rescue Silas was the height of idiocy.
But she remembered. Remembered him nursing her back to health in the months after the revolt. Remembered being holed up in Dregs, Silas spending every cred he made to keep her healthy and fed. Remembered him writing the software that helped her walk again. Modifying the optic that let her see again. He’d saved her life during the revolt. Got her out. Kept her hidden. Kept her safe. And though the memories were monochrome and jumbled and fuzzy at the edges, she remembered enough. She remembered she loved him.
She heard the echo of his words in her father’s office, years and lifetimes ago.